Lucia Hartini

Realistic Representation

Overarching1) What is reality?2) How can artworks be a reflection of life?

Topical1) What is the subconscious?2) How might our everyday lives influence the subconscious?3) What is a paradox?4) How does a paradox in a painting lead us to think about reality?

Essential Questions

5W1H HowOil

paintings

WhyExploring the “other” reality

WhatCosmology

Identity

WhichSurrealism

WhereIndonesia

When1959 – present

Lucia Hartini

The ArtistHer life- Related chain of events to her art

• 1959: Born on January 10 in Temanggung, Central Java.

Her career started in the mid-seventies with a series of self-portraits. Leading up to the historic date of May 22nd 1998 when Suharto resigned, spontaneous art events erupted before huge crowds in Indonesia.

• 1997: Studied at Indonesia Art College (STSRI), Yogyakarta, the Art High School for students intending to proceed to either the Art Academy, ASRI, or to ISSI for training as an art teacher.

• There she studied art, taught from an Indonesianised European academic Fine Art perspective, developing her ability to draw and learning the techniques of painting in oils on canvas. (Dudley, 2000)

• More avenues for the art-oriented Indonesian citizens, like Hartini, to open up and make her works more noticeable in Jakarta and to the world. Her artworks often challenges her minority status as a woman and Catholic in a predominantly Muslim environment.

The ArtistHer life- Related chain of events to her art

• early 1990’s: She collapsed due to mental exhaustion, overwork, and the socially induced pressures.

• Lucia encountered her spiritual teacher, the Taiwanese female guru Master Summa Ch’ing Hai, and was able to work her way back to psychological well-being through an ordered regime of meditation and spiritual practice.

• This experience has strong influence in many of her works.

• Lucia stresses that her compulsion to paint, and her ability to find the strength enabling her to continue as normal well into the course of her madness ‘came of its own accord’. She did not wish it in her conscious mind, but she was able to perform.

• This has echoes of the ‘automatic writing’ practiced by the Surrealists, as does Lucia’s statement that she combines the ideas which come to her from inspiration, observation and experience with how she feels and what is happening to her in life at any point.

• She has never deserted the figurative for the abstract as a painting style.

Which

• Addresses her status as a woman and Catholic in a predominantly Muslim environment.

• Realistic paintings that are no longer connected to “reality”

• Alternative female archetypes from Indonesian history and legend

What

• Hartini is known for paintings that have thematic complexity, a strong sense of drama and visual richness.

•  Her visionary, surreal paintings reflect the reality of the human life in the twentieth century: One filled with many complications.

• They are realistic yet at the same time ‘unearthly’ – resulting in their surrealistic quality.

• Hartini infuse fantasy and reality together: an effective blending of the trapped human soul, the desire of wanting to drift forever in fantasy with reality.

Subject Matter

• Symbols are used extensively in Hartini’s works.

• She paints horses (signifying gentleness and virility), flowers (fragility, beauty and femininity), earth and sea (dynamic interacting forces of nature) to create personal narratives emblematic of contemporary Javanese gender relationships.

• Her intimations of submerged violence, social coercion, lack of privacy and difficulties in establishing boundaries speak to the problems of shaping a distinct self.

Subject Matter

Horse by the ocean , 1998Oil on canvas, 60 x 70 cm

• Most of her works are seeking to examine the intersecting boundaries of gender and culture in Indonesian society.

• Some works are relatively feminism-based, as a result of the patriarchal society she is from.

• Her main characters normally have their faces hidden, and if it were a woman hiding her façade, Hartini will justify as to why the woman is doing so with a good reason, e.g. she is jaded at the sight of repeated adversities all over the world and thus opts to not see or listen further for it is beyond her threshold of tolerance.

Subject Matter

• She believes that it is possible to enter the “other” reality

• Encountered the “invisible” reality in her•childhood, sensing the wind, sounds and smells that were not related to any source which enabled her to imagine another kind of “reality” • Paintings were also a kind of self-identification aside from being a record of the other reality

Why

•Oil paintings with landscapes that portray the “other” reality

•Her surrealistic style paintings are manifestations of her fantasies, imaginations and dreams

•She uses a visual language she has developed on her own since the early 1980s

•Sensitive to all kinds of phenomena around her

•Painting to her is a way of meditation in which her imagination and feelings from moment to moment are left to flow out at will.

•She fully comprehends and enjoys a very detailed work

How

• Uses oil-paints on canvas.

• Her brush strokes are rather elaborate with smooth blending of the paint. This is evident in the creases of her subject’s dresses, the luscious quality of fabrics and clouds.

• She captures her subject matter realistically, paying careful attention to textures, details, proportion and light/shadow to create 3D modeling.

 

Style and Technique

Child on the Edge

• Painting is heavily loaded with symbols, indicating apprehension for the future.

• Displayed a woman in among the rocks, with her face looking back at the mighty wave of the ocean.

• The woman is holding an umbrella, the spokes and the top of which was drawn as circling clouds. And at the fringe of the umbrella hung the planets.

• Painting seems to suggest an imminent storm, the use of umbrella is like a sign to prepare for the turbulence ahead – urging others to get ready for trials in the 21st century.

Beneath the Umbrella of the Millennium, 1996, Oil on canvas

Hartini married a fellow artist at a relatively tender age and gave birth to two children. She was later abandoned by her spouse and struggled to make ends meet as a single mother.

Being in a conservative society, Hartini’s status as a single mother was a stigma and she was constantly under the disparagement of surrounding people.

The artist is portrayed as a vulnerable object of scrutiny from those prying, floating eyes.

She is asleep and crotched in a foetal position.

Her subsequent painting will portray her as someone stronger, standing up to society’s criticism.

Spy Lens, 1989. Oil on canvas145 x 145 cm

Srikandi, 1993. Oil on canvas. 150 x 150cm.

Interpretation

Srikandi is a powerful rejection of society’s prescribed role for the woman. Here, the artist projects herself in the persona of Srikandi, the wife of Arjuna, an exceptional female known for her strength of character and prowess as a warrior in the Mahabarata. This painting is a sequel to an earlier self-portrait “Spy Lens”. Where “Spy Lens” expresses her vulnerability as a passive object of prying eyes floating in a foetal position with a surreal landscape allegorical of existential reality. Hartini in her sequel attributes to her persona the semblance of power; physical strength, a commanding if not aggressive stance, and above all, the power of the gazer over society’s gazing eyes, now stripped of their import. (Source: Themes in Modern Indonesian Art)

See text box below for more information

Srikandi - mythical warrior woman, a favourite character from the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, well known throughout Indonesia.

Lucia paints herself as Srikandi, dressed in the blue cloth worn by members of the womens’ armies who historically protected the Sultans of feudal Central Java.

In the painting, she piercingly repels the critical and doubting eyes of society which had formerly rendered many of its women prisoners of tradition.

She glares back unflinchingly, her posture determined and uncompromising, ready to fend off these critics.

• This canvas shows a young man standing in a mountain-range, holding a bouquet of white roses.

• He has stopped, mid-step, uncertain whether to proceed or turn back, his posture like one who is in hesitation.

• However, his expression hides behind a mask, obscured from view.

• His army-print trousers indicate battle or struggle, the flowers indicate beauty, longing, ideals.

• The artist revealed that she has painted what a wishful portrait of her estranged husband, where she visualises him with the power to fulfill his dreams.

• The painting represents a clear concern with the pain and struggle of a human being.

Young Man of May, 1998200 X 200cmOil on canvas

Kasih Sayang by Lucia Hartini, 1999. Oil on canvas150 x 150 cm

Style and Technique• Colour/Harmony: The colours

selected by Hartini may vary, from hues of a main primary colour (e.g. in Blinded Young Man, one of only two colours used is blue, and this is used different hues), to a spectacular fusion of two colours which, in reality, seem to contrast (e.g. in the painting shown on next slide, red and blue are used to create ‘opposition’ between serenity and peril as the baby plunges into the vortex of darkness).Blinded Young Man

Style and Technique

• Gradient/Blending of Colour: This is most evident in all of Hartini’s paintings. Her usage of colours is highly commendable. A perfect blend of black and blue of different shades seem to complement each other. In the painting on the top right, Hartini uses red in contrast with blue to distinguish between the two human forms in the painting, the mother and her baby. The wisps of clouds are also well blended at the end where the colour blue meets red.

Style and Technique• Negative Spaces: Her usage

of appropriate negative spaces helps to create contrast and even more depth to her hallucinogenic painting. Negative spaces help to make her painting more three-dimensional and layered, enhancing the judgment of depth of the painting’s viewers.

Style and Technique

Movement: The main figures in her paintings, most of the time, have ‘twisted’ bodies in a graceful manner. Their faces are covered either by their hands or other objects around them. In one painting, swirling cloud movement which leads to seemingly a ‘black hole’, upon viewing, appears to draw you in until your surroundings dissolve into the magical world of Lucia Hartini’s mind: her imagination. The focal point was created and the audience’s viewpoint is directed.